I felt like I have known the school a lot better these days. I know my directions already (well, the school is big but the numbers of classes are small with 590 students). The teachers are even much friendlier nowadays. Sometimes we joke about the fight between the Sports House (by the way, I’m in Topaz House, yellow colour), or share the troubles we had for our classes. It made me realize that, if there are no spaces or chances for such sharing, teachers would be totally burned with the pressure of teaching. I need to be realistic in my view of teaching as I don’t believe it is all rainbows in our lives. Sometimes, I faced difficulties in the classroom. Students do not understand me, students causing behavioural problem, and many other problems. By sharing this dilemma with other teachers who are more experienced with the school and ways to teach, they can provide me with the necessary help.
However, I also realized that it is not fair to only blame the students. I had to look into my own teaching too. I realized sometimes I have high expectation for the students, and my lessons are tailored to meet that end. For this matter, I always look for solutions to deal with my own problem. I noticed that by using materials from the textbook can be hard for the students. Therefore, I took the initiative to look into authentic materials from the Internet or newspaper clippings. Nevertheless, the result is the same. Then, I realized that the main problem is not of the material, but the level of it. I started to summarize the articles I found, and simplify the languages in it for the students to understand. The main problems as I saw within the students are the lack of vocabulary. Therefore, in every lesson, I tried to list down some of the vocabularies for students to understand it first. A vocabulary-advocate teacher would firstly eliminate the vocabulary problem before students engage the text to minimize comprehension level, and I agree to that.
Some suggested me to bring a cane to scare the students, but it is against my belief to rule the students by fear. I found that students, especially the boys, are much more resilient towards physical punishment. It is dangerous to fight fire with fire. It is at this crucial stage for teenagers that they are prone towards peer influence and fighting to express their own views. I tried to blend in with the students to understand them better, and I think it works in few cases where students who usually cause problems in the class are now starting to pay attention in my class (although the attention span might be shorter than I expected). Hence, I believe that one day, students will be able to change themselves, by the mean of changing myself to adapt to the students’ level.
What will next week hold for me? Every day is a new day, a new challenge. With that notion, I must be ready myself physically and mentally.
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